Saturday, October 24, 2015

“Goodfellas” mob rat Henry Hill was so hated by some of his former pals that they skipped his 2012 wake.
“F–k him,” growled Bonanno capo Vinny Asaro on a secret recording played Friday at his trial in Brooklyn federal court.
On trial for the famed 1978 Lufthansa heist that was featured in
Martin Scorsese’s 1990 flick “Goodfellas,” Asaro told his wire-wearing
turncoat cousin, Gaspare Valenti, that he didn’t bother to attend Hill’s
wake.
“That’s one less left of Lufthansa,” Valenti chimed in, referring to
Hill’s death and the dwindling number of crooks left from the score. “He
made a big thing like he was there with us.”
“Yeah,” Asaro responded. “Piece of sh-t.”
Valenti, a Bonanno associate who earlier testified that he and Asaro took part in the $6 million JFK robbery, flipped on his cousin after tiring of the mob life in 2008.
Hill — the turncoat who was portrayed by Ray Liotta in the movie
based on Hill’s life in the mob — was not on the actual job that night,
but put the crew in touch with Marty Krugman, a Queens wig-store owner
who first tipped them off to the potentially glorious haul.
But after grousing one too many times about his inadequate cut of the
Lufthansa loot, Krugman — presented as “Morrie” in the film — was
knocked off.
Valenti earlier testified that Asaro waited in a car near the JFK
heist along with reputed mastermind Jimmy “The Gent” Burke while the
robbery crew breached the hangar and loaded up the loot.
Increasingly paranoid in the wake of the heist, Burke bumped off many of the participants to prevent them from snitching.

The Lufthansa heist makes the front page on Dec. 11, 1978.

The feds claim Asaro was given $500,000 after Lufthansa but squandered it through gambling and extravagant purchases.
Prosecutors later played Valenti’s final recording of Asaro in 2013,
where Valenti informed his cousin that agents were eyeing a house where
an alleged Asaro murder victim was once buried.
Valenti claimed Asaro grew suspicious of him after he made the
disclosure and that he never saw him again until this week’s trial.
“And at that moment you believe he knew you were an informant?” asked
prosecutor Nicole Argentieri. “Yes,” Valenti answered as Asaro scowled
at him from the defense table.